The Sequester Quest

Thoughts from Behind the Pressline

It’s appropriate that I draft this column flying at 10,000 feet while crossing this beautiful country of ours, on a quick overnight trip to Las Vegas for a publishers’ meeting. As I peer out the window, I ponder what our elected officials will do in the coming week with the March 1 Sequester deadline.

For all of our sakes, I hope they’ve worked out a compromise to put the country on a correction course to begin addressing our ever-rising debt load.

From this publisher’s perspective, here are my recommendations to those who ultimately are suppose to be running this country and looking out for our best interest and the generations to come.

Mr. President, you won the election. You’ve no further need to keep campaigning. It’s time to govern. I know you think you’ve got the upper hand over the bumbling Republicans, and perhaps you’re thinking this an opportune time to bring them to their knees. Mr. President, please take a lesson from President Lincoln. He and Gen. Grant understood we are all Americans, and standing on the neck of the South would not heal the wounds of the Union. It was time to unite and rebuild. Mr. President it’s within your reach to be the “Great Uniter” or the “Great Divider.” This nation needs to come together. Please use your reelection and your skills as a community organizer to be the ultimate nation organizer. Reach out to the opposition and embrace them as you’ve embraced your own party. Use your powerful office to unite and bring us all into the new future this country so desperately needs now.

Mr. Boehner, as Speaker of the House it’s within your power to lead your party and the nation. Current public opinion of the Republican-led house is at an all-time low. If you can lead, you have nowhere to go but up. If you can’t lead the House and this nation to anything more than just further gridlock, then perhaps it’s time to step down and let a new leader seek solutions that enhance the party’s standing and inspire the party faithful. The nation and the economy need an optimistic outlook. We need to restore national pride. We need to put a new luster on America’s world imagine. The world needs American leadership now perhaps more than ever, but if we can’t solve our own problems, how will we realistically meet the many challenges that lie on the world agenda?

Dan Alexander is associate publisher of New Market Press and publisher and CEO of Denton Publications. He may be reached at dan@newmarketpressvt.com or dan@denpubs.com.